The present invention relates to excavating implements and more particularly to implement blades.
Many conventional excavating devices are provided with buckets or blades (hereafter generally termed xe2x80x9cbucketxe2x80x9d) for excavation purposes including digging, scraping, cleaning, and demolition. Such buckets are used to push, fracture and to shovel materials. The leading edge of a bucket is typically formed as a beveled or non-beveled straight edge that extends across the bucket bottom and is the first part of the bucket to engage the material being excavated. It is well understood that the leading edge is subjected to heavy wear and stress factors.
Some manufactures produce replacement edges for buckets with leading edges that are similar in configuration to the original, straight line bucket leading edge. Such attachments are intended to reduce wear on the original leading edges. This would be an advantage except for the fact that the straight cutting edges do not function efficiently for excavation and clean-up operations, nor will they operate efficiently to break up or shatter the materials being excavated. Further, straight line leading edges tend to ride over materials on a hard surface, thus leaving debris which slides under the blade.
Toothed attachments of various sorts have been produced which may be mounted to the top or bottom surfaces of conventional buckets or blades. They have teeth extending forwardly of the original edge. The forwardly projecting teeth are used for breaking up or shattering materials ahead of the bucket or blade. These attachments may improve operations but are use specific and often do not function effectively for clean-up operations for the same reasons stated above.
A long felt need has remained for a bucket with a leading edge that will function efficiently for numerous uses.
It is therefore one aspect of the present invention to provide an excavating implement that will function to reduce or substantially eliminate wear of a bucket leading edge, while providing structure that will improve excavation efficiency over a wide range of uses.
It is a further aspect of the present invention to provide such an excavating implement that may be adapted to fit numerous bucket configurations.
Still another aspect of the present invention is to provide such an excavating implement that will effectively reduce horsepower requirements and thereby improve overall operating efficiency of the implement power source.
Yet still another aspect of the present invention is to provide such an excavating implement that may be easily and quickly mounted to existing excavator buckets.
These and still further aspects and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from the following description which, taken with the appended drawings, disclose the best mode presently known to the Applicants for carrying out the invention.